A couple of months ago I decided to upgrade from Office 2003 because I needed Access and the 2003 Office Suite I owned did not have it. The full Office 2007 Professional cost $460+ from CDW.

Office 2003 used to run fine on my ordinary Windows XP Laptop, a Dell D620 with 2 GB memory. Then I made the mistake of installing Office 2007 and my computing life has been hell ever since. Both Word and Outlook crash at frequent, yet random, intervals. These crashes have cost me tons of wasted time recreating lost work. These programs now have me so paranoid that I save my work about every 30 seconds. When they are not crashing during work, they crash when I attempt to close the programs, offering to phone home to MS with mysterious error reports. All the software on my PC is up-to-date, including the one 3rd party add-in that I use with Office 2007, Acrobat Standard PDF Maker 8.1.

Microsoft itself is zero help. After an email to them they called me from Bangalore, India, and said that we would have to uninstall the Office add-ins one by one until we found out which one was crashing Word. Then I would have to do the with same with another Microsoft guy that worked with Outlook. I said, look, I do not have time for that. Besides, I only have one 3rd party add-in, Acrobat, which cost $250, and has the Microsoft seal of approval. All other add-ins were dumped into Word and Outlook by your MS Office setup program and were in fact written by Microsoft itself. So forget it. I am not going to sit on the phone for God knows how long uninstalling up to 17 (!!) add-ins one by one until the problem is located. And even then the problem might not be the add-ins at all.

The Microsoft refund department is supposed to be calling me in the near future (according to the MS support guy).

Anyone else have this bloatware? What has been your experience? Even when it was not crashing I found Office 2007 to be ponderous and very slow, even compared to the far from speedy Office 2003. And the menu system!!?? Forget anything you think you knew about working with Word, Excel, or the rest. The new menu system returns you to beginner status. It is profoundly counter-intuitive and you know where nothing is located so it takes lots longer to get work accomplished.

My wife has it on a new dell with vista and 2gb of memory, it works fine but her school dell with vista and 1gb crashed constantly as you note. I increased virtual memory, let the computer pick some environment settings, and removed an old virus checker and they all work near perfect now - the other teachers send them home for me to tinker with. XP may need same? btw the wife loves 2007.

My wife has it on a new dell with vista and 2gb of memory, it works fine but her school dell with vista and 1gb crashed constantly as you note. I increased virtual memory, let the computer pick some environment settings, and removed an old virus checker and they all work near perfect now - the other teachers send them home for me to tinker with. XP may need same? btw the wife loves 2007.

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Well, too late now. The software has been returned. After two months of fighting with it, I'd had it. I instead ordered a stand alone copy of Access 2007 and associated SQL components for the ODBC work I needed to perform. Obtaining a copy of Access was the only reason I "upgraded" from Office 2003 to 2007. Everyone's situation is different, but I have been using PCs for a long time and Office 2007 (in particular Word 2007 and Outlook 2007) were the worst performing and interface designed programs I had ever crashed into. I recently downloaded a copy of Open Office the free competition to MS Office. And while not loaded with obscure features I'll never use like MS Office, The Open Office software does what I need, is stable, and much faster than MS Office. Oh, and it costs more than $460 dollars less.

After learning on pc's and owning 4 or 5 of them within about an eight years span, in a fit of pique I finally bought a Mac about 2 years ago. 2 Months ago, bought an MacBook, I wouldn't look back. May not be right for everyone, but it serves me well. I love this video, reminds me of 'Fame v. The Office':

After learning on pc's and owning 4 or 5 of them within about an eight years span, in a fit of pique I finally bought a Mac about 2 years ago. 2 Months ago, bought an MacBook, I wouldn't look back. May not be right for everyone, but it serves me well. I love this video, reminds me of 'Fame v. The Office':

I have two computers, the main one runs on Ubuntu and I use OpenOffice. The second one has XP Pro and Office XP. I did try out the latest Office on the Windows machine (trial download thing). I'll cut a long story short. It stuffed up my XP Pro computer so badly I had to flat format the hard disk and re-install the OS. No way will I ever buy another MS product, the second machine can simply run with what it has.

I have two computers, the main one runs on Ubuntu and I use OpenOffice. The second one has XP Pro and Office XP. I did try out the latest Office on the Windows machine (trial download thing). I'll cut a long story short. It stuffed up my XP Pro computer so badly I had to flat format the hard disk and re-install the OS. No way will I ever buy another MS product, the second machine can simply run with what it has.

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Did you talk to the MS Office support tech from Bangalore? She knew nothing, but was very polite.

Did you talk to the MS Office support tech from Bangalore? She knew nothing, but was very polite.

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I had to re-install XP Pro os on a computer once, I couldn't do the online verification thing so I had to phone a number. I think from the lady's accent she was in the Philippines. Very nice, very courteous, we went through the dance and I assured her I was re-installing the os on the original computer and not trying to duplicate it onto another and I must have sounded truthful (and I was telling the truth) because she activated it for me.

I had to do it again a couple of years ago and I thought, no stuff this, I'll give Linux a try. I did and I'm staying with it. I keep XP Pro on the other machine in case I need it and Office but so far Linux and OO have been fine.

I have moved from Office 97 to 00 to 03. Since I have XP pro I am not going to Vista or Office 07.

My Office came with Access and all the other stuff. One of wifes bennies at the university was free (legal no less) software.

Your comments on a new menu system really ticks me off. The best part of Office was all the programs had a similar scheme. Hell I have a Que book that is well over 1000 pages on programming with Outlook97 and it is still mostly relevent with OL2k+3.

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